Apple releases iTunes 11

Apple has released iTunes 11. Grab it now via the Mac App Store's Software Update. It introduces a completely redesigned interface, a new store, playback syncing, improved search, a new MiniPlayer, and better iCloud integration.

Introducing the new iTunes. With a dramatically simplified player, a completely redesigned Store, and iCloud features you'll love -- this is the best iTunes yet.

The new interface of iTunes 11 features an edge-to-edge design, custom designs for each album, movie, or TV show in your library, and getting personal recommendations when you visit the Store.

The new Store has also been redesigned to have a cleaner look making it easier to discover new music. It's actually very similar to the App Store on the iPhone and iPad with the scrolling features at the top and other categories below that also scroll horizontally and separated by other features.

The improved iCloud integration now works like you'd expect iCloud to work with iTunes. When you purchase music, movies, and TV shows, they will appear inside your library. Groundbreaking, I know! A simple double-click will play them directly from iCloud or you can sync to a device or play while offline.

The new MiniPlayer in iTunes 11 is featured top and center and now includes a lot more information in a lot less space. In addition to the song and artist names and other relevant information, the MiniPlayer also includes a button that shows you a list called Up Next of what's playing next. Don't like what's up next? No problem! Either remove it, move to a different spot in the queue, or add songs before it. You can also find many other actions by clicking the arrow next to any of the songs listed in Up Next.

Some other new features of iTunes 11 include an improved search across you're entire library (like Spotlight) and playback syncing with iCloud so that you can pick up where you left off regardless of which devices you're using.

Users have been impatiently waiting for this release, so now that it's out, what do you think? Love it or hate it? Sound off in the comment below!

Former app and photography editor at iMore, Leanna has since moved on to other endeavors. Mother, wife, mathamagician, even though she no longer writes for iMore you can still follow her on Twitter @llofte.

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just click songs at the top and it puts them in the old list with the browser for genres artists and albums at the top just like it used to be. turn on side bar and it can look exactly like it used to.

i actually really like the Artist list best now. puts all the artists on the left then sorts by album in the main window.

i didnt think i'd like itunes 11. but actually it seems very fluid. im enjoying it.

Happy that itunes 11 finally arrived but i think i will wait to see what the windows users have to say about it. In my experience Itunes does not always work seamlessly as it does on a mac, but i am excited to test it out and see if itunes-wifi sync has improved.

Seems clearly the people at Apple do not move files around or add new files to their collection often.

Not that fond of not having my playlists on the left. Hope there's a way i can move that back. I don't really get why Apple feels this need to hide controls. on the plus side it feels a bit quicker in windows. I'll give it a week or so before i decide if i'll go back to the old version. Edit: I got the playlists back on the left. You have to find the part that says "show menu bar" then the menu's come up and you can make it show "sidebar". That got them all back which is great. Back close to the way i had it before.

The Album views are problematic for me. It just seems incapable of handling the size of my colllection. it always has to redraw the album cover if you scroll an album off screen then come back to it. Maybe that's cause my computer sucks. don't know. Also under artists view the left side cover art doesn't show even though the album has art and it shows on the top of itunes left of the song title and scrobbler. That's weird. And just double check itunes is clearly seeing the artwork when selecting "get info." Don't use that mode though since it's not efficient or divided by genre so long run it's not an issue for me. Also in Albums I don't get why clicking on an album doesn't show every song in the album if it's a compilation. Logic would say album view would show every song on an album. And for lots of albums even though tags show exact same album text (i double checked) they show up as different albums. But do wish is showed the small album art in the corner in song list view. I use list view mostly though so i'll let those that use the album views worry about it.

My old computer died (or should i say HP put a defective graphics card, soldered to the board thus not HP replaceable and the card died, thus the whole computer died) and i'm on a family hand me down until i get the funds for a macbook pro so it could be. IT's a crappy compaq with an AMD proccessor and it's years old so could be. Plus i think it only has 4GBs of ram maybe. Damn i need a new computer. Like i said, not really a big deal as i use list view most of the time and i got that back working. And i'm 22000+ songs and just 2200+ albums. Damn 8044 albums? You got a lot of singles huh?

You can set up itunes to look almost identical as before if thats what you want. I like you prefer my playlists on the left like they were previously. Click on the small icon in the upper left, then click on the view tab, then onto show sidebar. It now will show just as it did previously.

I have an iMac and a MacBook Pro and at last I can connect my iPad to each one without being told that the iPad is associated with another computer and its contents will be wiped if I attempt a sync.

The new user interface isn't too far from the original but it appears a good deal more polished and, subjectively, more responsive.

I think I am going to have problems dragging playlists manually to my iPad and iPhone, though, as the left hand pan is missing. I can't see how to copy playlists from a shared library on my iMac to my MacBook Pro either. Most of my music is ripped from CDs and not purchased from the iTunes store. Hopefully someone will come up with the answer - not Apple as of this moment, as their documentation still refers to iTunes 10.

Just read 9thwonder's comment and the sidebar is now back. View/Show Sidebar; it's not shown by default. Feet back on solid ground again, and I feel much better.

Apple still doesn't allow you to drag a playlist from a shared library to an iPhone or iPad even though they are all attached to the same account - you still have to drag it into the iTunes library on the Mac you are on and then from there on to the iDevice. Illogical.

Good things must come to people who wait. I am happy that they did not release itunes 11 in October because if it was anything less than what i just started using then i would think less of Apple. Finished installing and rebooted and its ALOT faster!! I always had a problem with itunes finding my iphone for the wifi sync, and this has been resolved couldn't ask for more and on top of that, the new interface is refreshing and easy to pick up...

So Leanna: After installing ver 11.0 , I click on devices, my iPad device and then 'Summary' across the top for selecting which parts of my device I'm interested in.. In some of the pages (Summary being the most obvious) that I try to interrogate, the background is black and the writing is very light grey, thus leaving the contents of that page UN-READABLE !!

Is it possible to start watching a podcast on the computer and finish watching it on a device? So far I like iTunes 11 on the Mac, but a little less on a PC (why must the menu bar be hidden as default for example)?

my husband wants to know how to revert back to iTunes 10 for Windows, it automatically did the update on his, despite him having it set to not automatically update anything, and he HATES iTunes11. I checked it out on is, and I don't plan to update to 11 on my mac. It's horrid, I agree.

I use iTunes A LOT to listen to my music and playlists. I LOVED the old version. Easy navigation table on the left hand side. Now, you have to click to get everywhere. Even to sync your iPhone. Absolutely took 10 steps back from my view.